How to Make Bouillon Cubes at Home

When you make a soup, stew or sauce, you add broth to it. Broth is a strained liquid left after cooking meat, fish or vegetables in water. Stock is also similar to broth, but it is cooked slowly and is more intense in flavor. That being said, bouillon cubes are a compressed form of stock that has to be dissolved before you can use it. Bouillon cubes that you buy from the market are salty, and you may find it wiser to cook them at your own home with less salt. They also contain monosodium glutamate (MSG) and hydrogenated oil (trans fat), that are proved to be harmful for your health. Homemade bouillon cubes are healthier and tastier than store-bought ones. In this oneHOWTO article, we are going to tell you how to make bouillon cubes at home.

Make broth bouillon cubes

This recipe to make bouillon cubes at home requires only one ingredient, which is homemade stock. It can be beef, chicken or any other meat stock of your choice. Follow these steps to make your homemade bouillon cubes:

First of all, gather your stock. It can be any homemade stock that you made using beef, chicken or meat. For this recipe, we are using bacon-scented flavor of stock. It makes awesome broth bouillon cubes.

Once you have made your stock, let it cool overnight

Skim off fat from the stock that must have risen and thickened during the night

Place it on medium flame in a pot and let it reduce. By doing this, you will remove all the grease but still retain the flavors

Keep simmering until the stock achieves a syrup like consistency. Best way is to boil it first on high flame, and then lower the flame to simmer until it is reduced by 50%

Usually, one gallon stock should be reduced to around 1 cup of bouillon in liquid form. But instead of measuring everything, just see that the stock has reduced and turned into a thickened lush sauce. When you put a spoon in it, it should coat its back completely. The consistency should be like that of maple syrup, heavy but runny

Allow the sauce to cool down

Line a loaf pan with plastic wrap

Pour the sauce into this pan, keep in the refrigerator and leave overnight

In the morning, you will see that the sauce has set like a jelly

Invert the pan upside down so that the jelly falls on a board

Remove the plastic wrap

Slice the jelly into the size of cubes of your choice

Store in small jars or ziplock bags

You can keep these cubes in the refrigerator for around 2 months, and in the freezer for as long as a year

Instant vegetarian bouillon cubes

If you don’t have time to boil and reduce the stock for hours, use this instant recipe to make vegetarian bouillon cubes at home:

Ingredients

3 medium sized coarsely chopped carrots

½ cup leeks, chopped

½ cup medium sized onion, quartered

½ cup peeled and diced celeriac

2 cloves of garlic

3 chopped celery stalks

4-5 chopped cherry tomatoes

½ cup coarsely chopped parsley

3 tbsp salt

Recipe

Place carrots, leeks, onion, celeriac and garlic in the blender

Blend until smooth

Use the temper of your blender to push down the ingredients

Add all the remaining ingredients in the blender

Pulse until you form a moist paste

Pour the paste into an ice tray

Keep in the freezer and let it freeze until they become solid

You can use these cubes in your recipe as you want

Chicken bouillon cubes

One of the most popular bouillon cubes to make at home is chicken bouillon, as it's widely used to make stock,homemade gravy and other stews and dishes. Follow this recipe to create your own homemade stock cubes.

Ingredients

2 chicken carcasses

12 cups water

1 carrot

1 garlic clove

2 celery stalks

1 onion

Recipe

Put all ingredients in a pot and cover with 2 inches water

Let the water boil, then let it simmer for 2 hours on low flame

Once the mixture cools down, pout it through a strainer

Throw out any bones

Pour this liquid in a saucepan and boil until the liquid is reduced by three fourth

Pour into a muffin tray or a cake pan

Refrigerate and freeze

Cut the cubes and you are good to go

If you want to read similar articles to How to Make Bouillon Cubes at Home, we recommend you visit our Recipes category.

Write a comment about How to Make Bouillon Cubes at Home

Your rating:
What did you think of this article?

I have read and accept the privacy policyRed Link to Media collects personal data for internal use only. Under no circumstances will your data be transferred to third parties without your permission.In accordance with the law of 8th December 1992, you can access the database containing your personal data and modify this information at any time by contacting Link to Media (info@linktomedia.net)